


The Mystery of the Missing Maraschino Cherries

by chrundletheokay



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M, again - i don't have the range, always and forever, autistic Charlie Kelly, because he is, but mac and dennis respect his boundaries, canon-typical dumbassery, charmacden but mostly charden and macdennis, cw for charlie's sorta conflicted/possibly confused feelings around sexuality and intimacy, established relationship macdennis, in anything i write just assume charlie kelly is autistic, jk i don't have the range but i tried, let's talk about consent baby! let's talk about you and me!, missing cherries is what counts as an interesting development on a slow day at paddy's apparently, oh ps, spoiler alert: no one actually gets laid, this isn't one of those ones where manipulation is disguised as ''consent'', well cheers m8 bc that's basically what this is, whoever commented on a past fic of mine that they love thirsty charlie, write the charmacden content you wish to see in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrundletheokay/pseuds/chrundletheokay
Summary: There’s maraschino cherries, of course. (Or there were, anyway.) There’s country music and not-square-dancing. There's spinning, and a dance lesson. Close-dancing and dips, but no chips. There’s Mac-and-Dennis, together, and the three of them sharing bourbon in a corner booth.There’s something in the air, or maybe in the beer. Charlie is way out of his element, but he thinks that may be an okay feeling to have.
Relationships: Charlie Kelly/Dennis Reynolds, Charlie Kelly/Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds, Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 12
Kudos: 67





	1. Playing Agatha Christie

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory Richard Siken quote, from "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out":  
> "We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor… / When I say this, it should mean laughter, / not poison."
> 
> —
> 
> TW: canon-typical stuff, e.g.,  
> \- substance use/abuse (alcohol; cigarettes and weed also mentioned),  
> \- misogyny and general toxicity toward Dee  
> \- Frank being Frank
> 
> Also, not sure how best to TW/CW for this, but:  
> \- This goes into Charlie’s thoughts and feelings around sexuality/intimacy/etc. It doesn’t go into trauma stuff, except somewhat in the last chapter. It’s more that… Charlie’s a little confused/unsure/conflicted. But Mac and Dennis respect that, and they respect his boundaries.

“Frank,” Dennis says. “Dude.”

Frank narrows his eyes, silently staring back at Dennis across the bar. He takes a big bite of the purple onion in his hand and chews loudly. Wet crunching noises and the acrid stench of onion fill the air, but Frank's eyes don't water even the slightest bit. There's something seriously wrong with the man.

Dennis braces his hands against the bar and leans forward, dangerously close to the horrid stench. _“Frank._ We’ve been over this, man: if you eat shit, you gotta replace it.”

“And I’m telling you,” Frank shouts, jabbing his finger at the bar’s surface for emphasis, “that I didn’t do it! An entire _gallon_ of Maraschino cherries? You gotta be kidding me! I’d be shittin’ bright red for _weeks!”_

“Wow,” Mac says. "Gross."

Dee nods in agreement, her face scrunched up in disgust. “Yeah, that was far more information than we needed.”

“Then tell your brother not to question me next time, if it bothers you so much,” Frank grumbles around a mouthful of raw onion.

Instead, Dee sits up straight and tall on her barstool and casts her gaze around the bar. It’s as if she fancies herself to be some sort of professional cherry detective. “If it wasn’t Frank, then my money’s on Charlie, no question.”

Mac nods in thoughtful agreement. "I actually would've gone with Charlie first."

With a scowl, Charlie tips back his beer bottle and takes a long contemplative drink. “What d’you guys think,” he says afterward, “that I sit around, like, hiding inside the vents? Just mindlessly shoving Maraschino cherries into my facehole like some kind of a monster?”

_“Yes!_ That sounds exactly like the kind of thing you’d do,” Mac exclaims.

“Man, fuck off! You’re just pissed ‘cause it’s your turn to go to the store.”

Mac throws his hands up in bewilderment. “How’s it my turn? Why can’t we just wait for the next shipment?” he shrieks.

_Why?_ Because Mac is obnoxious and besmirched Charlie’s character in front of a jury of his peers. Because when he was hiding in the vents, he saw Mac and Dennis making out. A few times. And so he drew the two of them a picture to be _nice_ , and Mac made a wiseass comment about it. The joke wasn’t even worth repeating or remembering, but it still set off Dennis’s snickering. And again, it was supposed to be _nice._ A _gift._ A way of saying “congratulations on finally banging, or admitting that you’re, like, obsessed with each other, or whatever it is you’re doing.” A way of doing it without actually coming out and saying anything, because, god, wouldn’t that be awkward and gross?

But no, Mac had to be an ass about it, so now Mac gets to do penance by going to the store.

Besides, what is a bar without the fancy cherries? If Charlie has to sit around all night, watching Mac and Dennis make heart eyes at each other, he needs more fancy cherries. Plus, someone finished off the last of the jar, and Charlie has a hypothesis about his new rat hotels, rat bait, and the specific properties of red food dye # 40.

Charlie sighs and regards Mac with the most condescending expression he can muster. “The widow’s coming tomorrow, bro," he lies smoothly. "You know, the one who always gets, like, a shit ton of Shirley temples, and she just sits there and hits on Dennis?”  


“Oh, damn, is that tomorrow?” murmurs Dennis dejectedly.

It’s not — it’s the first Wednesday of every month, after she gets her hair done at the salon down the street. But no one is confident enough to argue, because none of these assholes pay enough attention to the customers who wander in. They can’t keep the days of the week straight, either.

“Plus, you guys,” Charlie continues, really selling the point, “I did the last, like, _three_ emergency supply runs, and you _know_ how I get with the chip machines.”

“It’s true; he’s gotten us banned from a couple stores now,” Frank agrees. His eyes are glazed over slightly, like he’s playing the memories out in his head.

"Seriously?" Dee says.

“Yeah. He keeps yelling at the machine,” Frank clarifies.

Mac folds his arms tight across his chest, his lower lip jutting out pathetically. “I just think that whoever stole the goddamn cherries should just fess up and replace them. Seriously, guys, man up. Or woman up. Or, y’know, whatever your gender is, just _do it,_ you goddamn asshole.”

Frank cuts him off with loud incoherent grumbling, waving his hand wildly in Mac’s direction as if to literally brush off his words. “Alright, I’ve had enough of this shit. If you kids wanna play Agatha-fuckin’-Christie out here with the maraschino cherries, knock yourselves out; but I’m done. If any of this comes to blows — or _worse_ — I didn’t see nothin’. Far as I’m concerned, any blood stains that come outta this are nothin’ but cherry juice.”

The gang watches in dumbfounded silence as Frank hobbles over to the office, grumbling all the way. From the office door, he gives them one last appraising look. “My money’s on Charlie,” he concludes, firmly and confidently, then slams the door closed.

The silence continues until the tension is palpable. Unable to bear it any longer, Charlie blurts out the first thing that comes to mind: “So do I kill you guys now, or—”

“Charlie, shut up,” Dennis cuts him off. “As the most intelligent — and by far the most attractive — member of the group, I’ve made an executive decision,” Dennis proclaims. “Seriously, there’s a very easy solution here.”

He pauses for dramatic effect, waiting until the others grow visibly impatient, irritated, and fidgety.

“Mac, go get the cherries,” he concludes in a rush.

The bar quickly descends into chaos — shouted protests from Mac, triumphant crowing from Charlie, individual demands that Mac purchase all sorts of random shit while at the store. Finally, Dennis shepherds Mac outside, ignoring his continued complaints, and shuts the door in his face.


	2. Dips, But No Chips

After Mac leaves, it’s just the three of them: Charlie, Dennis, and Dee. Not a customer in sight. Even by Paddy’s standards, it’s a horrible night for business.

“We might as well not even be here,” Charlie argues. Dennis snaps at him to shut up, saying they can “at least _pretend_ to have a working business.”  So, beer in hand, Charlie wanders over to flip aimlessly through the jukebox. The song names are written too small, and the letters won’t stay put long enough for him to decode. He closes his eyes and picks a song at random. It’s a jangly country number with upbeat acoustic guitars, a bass playing loudly, and a man warbling along over it.

“What _is_ this?” inquires Dennis as he wanders over from the bar. He looks back and forth from the jukebox to Charlie, eyebrows furrowed, utterly baffled. “Why do we even _have_ this music?”

“The square dancing night, I think. Go Texan Night, or whatever,” Dee offers from over at the bar, like anyone asked her.

“Oh yeah,” Charlie drawls. He has brief flashbacks of giant pointy-toed boots, brightly-colored bandanas, the protests of customers who did not appreciate his banjo playing, and a brawl between a regular customer and an actual native Texan who inexplicably wandered into Paddy’s.

“I didn’t know you were allowed to leave Texas,” Charlie muses aloud. “I always thought it was like Florida. Or, you know, prison.”

With a faint frown tugging at the corners of his lips, Dennis shakes his head in silent disapproval.

“It’s got a nice beat, though,” he adds, noting Dennis’s foot tapping along to the music.

“It does, right?” Dennis agrees eagerly. “Like, it’s not just me?”

“Nah, man, those cowboys knew what they were doing. Really gets the blood pumpin’, makes you wanna dance along.” Charlie suddenly finds himself clapping along with the beat, doing a weird little bounce-and-sway move in place on the balls of his feet.

Dennis’s face does that weird thing it always does when he’s trying too hard to keep his expression neutral, desperate to seem cool and unaffected. It’s almost like a wince or a flinch, and then he’s scanning the room, as if he has to determine who his audience is before he’ll let himself have too much fun. Fuck that. Charlie’s having fun doing a cowboy dance, and anyone who has a problem with it can go fuck themselves. Isn’t that what Texas is all about?

There still are no customers in the bar, anyway — just Dee, perched on a stool at the bar, screwing around on her iPad. She’s been looking for auditions lately. It’s hard to decide what’s more embarrassing: that she’s looking at all, or that she’s so transparently desperate for everyone to ask her about it. (Naturally, no one has asked, but that doesn’t stop her from fishing for attention.)

“You wanna do it?” Dennis asks at length.

“What, square dance?”

“I mean, not, like, _square_ dance; but yeah.”

Charlie shrugs. “Yeah, alright. Let’s do it, man.”

After a bit of awkward shuffling and fidgeting, they find a comfortable position: Charlie’s left hand clasped in Dennis’s right, each with one hand on the other’s waist. Dennis’s hands are oddly soft and smooth. It shouldn’t be surprising, though; Dennis hasn’t done an honest day’s work in his entire life.

The song playing over the jukebox speakers is uptempo. They trot around the bar, rotating every now and then in large circles. Charlie doesn’t know what the dance is called, or if it even has a proper name, but it’s not square dancing. It feels old-timey, like something he might have seen in a Disney movie, when the princess has the big dance with her Prince Charming. Except Dennis is not Prince Charming, and Charlie is no princess.

“I wanna spin you,” Charlie blurts out halfway through the second song. “Can I spin you?”

“Yeah, why not?”

It’s slightly awkward, with Dennis being taller. He ducks under their arms, and ends up bumping into Charlie. With a snort of laughter and a huge grin, he takes a step back. “Other way,” he says. “Let’s try the other way. I’ll spin you next time.”

When they circle back around the bar, Dee is talking to herself, gesticulating dramatically, her face contorted with unnaturally exaggerated expressions. It looks a lot like what she calls “rehearsing a monologue.” Not that anyone asked her. And not that that stopped her from explaining it just the same.

Dennis twirls Charlie around a couple times, going faster and faster each time, until the neon bar signs blur in Charlie’s peripheral vision as he spins. He feels pleasantly dizzy. He not quite light-headed; instead, his entire body feels lighter than usual. Like maybe Dennis turned off the gravity in the bar, or maybe their dancing is defying the laws of physics. Who’s to say? Perhaps they could get a scientist on retainer, to consult on matters such as this.

After a few songs, they take a break, leaning against the jukebox and breathing hard. Their elbows bump into each other as they take big gulps of their ice cold beer, and Dennis lines up more songs for them. Across the room, Dee continues muttering to herself, although it looks like genuine irritation, rather than the fake emotions she manufactures while attempting to act.

By unspoken agreement, they find themselves hand-in-hand, ready to dance again.

“D’you think you can dip me? You know how?” asks Dennis.

The only dipping Charlie knows is the kind people do with tortilla chips and salsa, but that doesn’t seem relevant. His response — an uncertain _maybe?_ — isn’t convincing. Dennis announces that he’s going to teach Charlie to do it properly.  He guides Charlie’s hands and limbs to all the right places, with far more patience than he usually displays. And that’s when Charlie discovers that this kind of dipping has nothing to do with chips and dip. In fact, there isn’t any food involved at all.

Instead, it’s about wrapping an arm around Dennis’s waist, with one hand on his lower back and the other between his shoulder blades. It’s about slotting their legs together slightly as Dennis circles an arm around Charlie’s neck.  Then, cautiously, deliberately, Dennis leans back as Charlie’s hands support him, helping to keep him upright. It’s like pretending to catch him as he faints. He talks Charlie through it, continually murmuring instructions and praise. It’s barely audible over the music and the sound of Charlie’s heart thumping in his ears. He has to listen closely to make out the individual words.

It’s close-dancing, Charlie decides as they run through it a few times. That’s probably not the real name for it, the proper name that rich people call it when they dance like this at fancy parties. But he and Dennis are so very close right now.  Other than the Waitress, Charlie can’t remember the last time he let anyone get this close, and for this long. His entire body feels like it’s vibrating in a weird way. It’s a _good_ weird, but it’s distracting and confusing to feel this way about Dennis again. _Still._ It feels eerily like being in their twenties all over again.

“Got it?” Dennis asks at last, his voice interrupting Charlie’s concentration. He can't have missed the way Charlie startles at the sudden sound, but he mercifully doesn’t comment on it.

Charlie swallows hard and nods. “Of course, dude.”

God, he hates his voice — how frequently it betrays his emotions, the way it’s doing now. It sounds reedy and nervous. If Dennis notices — which he must; _surely_ he must — he doesn’t comment on that, either.

“Good. I think so, too,” Dennis replies evenly.

Once they resume dancing, Charlie tries to mentally prepare himself for the first real dip. Suddenly, he realizes: the instructions are a blur of hands and hips and legs, and he can’t focus enough to keep track of the steps and the beats. Thankfully, Dennis takes the lead without complaint.

The pace of their dancing is much slower now. It’s not quite slow-dancing, but it’s nowhere near the wild trotting and twirling from before. It’s more about even, measured steps that form wide arcs and circles around the bar. It feels weird to move like this, and to do it this close to another person. Charlie doesn’t want to stop.

As they near the jukebox again, he spins them around. And then he goes for it — for real this time. On his own, without Dennis talking him through it. Muscle memory kicks in as he goes. He lowers Dennis down into a little dip, nervous all the while about dropping him. Charlie isn’t responsible for holding up _all_ of Dennis’s weight, but shit happens, right? Especially when people are buzzed and dancing to weird country music.

Thankfully, it goes smoothly, judging by Dennis’s reaction.

“Shit, that’s good. You got it,” he breathes. He ducks his head aside, pressing his cheek to Charlie’s, as if to hide the grin on his face and the way his eyes are twinkling. It’s too late though — Charlie catches a glimpse and hears Dennis’s delighted, breathy laughter.

Dennis's approval — rare as it is to earn — feels like something to be treasured. Mac would be _so_ fucking jealous if he knew.

The song changes again. It’s yet another unfamiliar country number, slightly slower than the previous ones. The two of them continue making their way around the bar, dancing and dipping and twirling.  It’s nice. Charlie can breathe. He doesn’t feel so much like he might jump out of his own skin with the excitement and manic energy of it all. The feeling has settled to more of a quiet hum, vibrating just under his skin. He dips Dennis a few more times, each dip going slightly lower and closer to the floor. The deliberate, repetitive movements are almost soothing, relaxing.

“Careful,” Dennis says on the last dip, when it gets a bit too low.

On a purely physical level, this whole dipping thing isn’t at all difficult. Admittedly, Charlie doesn’t pay money to work out in a gym like Mac and Dennis do. It would be idiotic to do so when Charlie can exercise for free — or, in fact, get paid to exercise — at Paddy’s. After all, _someone_ has to lug the kegs around the bar. Plus, rat bashing is a great upper body workout. So gym or no gym, he’s strong. Dennis, in contrast, is a scrawny twink. Charlie could probably benchpress him, provided someone first explained what exactly benchpressing _is._

As Charlie considers this, the song changes once more. A slowed-down version of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” plays on the jukebox. Dee found it online and obsessed over it for a full week, playing it repeatedly, until Dennis shouted abuse and threw a pair of headphones at her. Charlie still has no idea how Dee got the music off of the tubes of the internet and into the jukebox, but he is glad she forgot it was in there.

The song isn’t bad in small doses, though. The music is low and dramatic. Mac insisted it sounds like a lesbian break-up song when it’s slowed down.

Charlie looks for Dee, to see if she’s happy to hear her lesbian music, but finds she’s no longer there. Dennis seems unconcerned by this information. “Yeah, I know,” he answers. “She left before, when I was teaching you how to dip me. Kinda hilarious, actually. She was pretty pissed. Like a giant, angry ostrich.”

“Oh. Huh. Why was she—?”

“Screw her. Doesn’t matter,” Dennis responds flippantly. “She’s lucky we don’t have any customers, or it’d be coming out of her paycheck.”

“Hmmm. D’you think Mac got lost, or did he just fuck off back home?”

Dennis shrugs and mumbles an incoherent reply into Charlie’s shoulder. His warm breath ghosts through the thin cotton of Charlie’s t-shirt. Goosebumps prickle along Charlie’s arms. His fingers reflexively twitch along the small of Dennis’ back.  His arms are full of restless energy and the uncomfortable urge to pull Dennis closer. He’s not sure if he’s allowed. It wasn’t part of the instructions, so he doesn’t do it.

Mid-dip, there’s a brief silence as “Jolene” ends and the next song queues up. Dennis went far too low on this one, really leaning back. Charlie’s center of gravity feels slightly off. Maybe Paddy’s has shifted on its axis. Or maybe the entire planet did. That might explain a few other things, too. Like  how soft and warm Dennis’s face appears in the dim light of the bar.

The sight of it stirs up an uncomfortable fluttering feeling in the vicinity of Charlie’s chest. It’s like butterflies flitting around inside his stomach, trying to crawl up his throat and escape out his mouth. He imagines them filling the entire bar, betraying this secret, unbearable, fluttering feeling inside of him.

Dennis blinks a couple times. He’s waiting, literally held in suspense. It’s not as if he can’t get back up on his own; he should be able to.  But he just waits and stares, his expression revealing nothing. Charlie is frozen. What he _wants_ to do and what he _should_ do are almost certainly two opposing courses of action. And what _Dennis_ wants him to do? Charlie has no idea.

And then it hits him. In the middle of the silent bar, Charlie’s face splits into a wicked grin, and a soft laugh bubbles up from the back of his throat.

“It was me; I ate all the fancy cherries,” he blurts out, like smearing his hands through icing on a cake that’s decorated too smooth, too perfect. Suddenly, the tension is cut.

Dennis blinks again. “What?” he asks breathlessly.

It turns out Charlie _was_ doing most the work of keeping Dennis up in the air. That means, according to his own instructions, Dennis was doing it wrong. When Charlie lets go, Dennis drops to the floor like dead weight. A painfully loud thud and an indignant yelp follow. The butterflies in Charlie’s stomach flutter back into the dark caverns from whence they came, and he finds himself standing on level ground once more.

“Oh, you _bastard,”_ Dennis wheezes. He’s lying on the dirty floor, folded over on himself like a giant pretzel, but he doesn’t seem seriously injured. “You absolute and complete piece of _shit_ , Charlie! I think I broke, like, my _entire ass.”_

This, Charlie knows how to handle. In his relief, he bursts into manic laughter. He tries to work out a punchline, sorely tempted to go with: _Oh damn, Mac’s gonna be heartbroken to hear that about your ass, dude._ But the hysterical laughter filling him up leaves no room in his mouth for words. Besides, instinct whispers: _Don’t. Don’t touch that._ For once, Charlie thinks he might listen to that tiny voice.

After a minute, Dennis reaches up and yanks at his hand. Charlie goes willingly, landing hard on the floor beside him.

Once, in high school, Dee taught Charlie how to fall properly — the way actors do it so they don’t hurt themselves. The muscle memory doesn’t kick in until Charlie is halfway to the floor. He fucks up the landing completely; it knocks the breath out of him for a second. He groans with pain, and suddenly, Dennis is shaking with laughter.

Eventually, he manages to force out words through his hysterical cackling: “You ate all of them? _All_ the cherries? That’s so nasty, dude!”

“No, I mean, I saved some for the rats. Or I tried to, anyway. I dunno, they disappeared. But it’s cool; at least now I don’t have scurvy.”

“You didn’t have it _before,_ dumbass,” shouts Dennis.

Charlie slaps halfheartedly in his direction. “You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do,” Dennis wails.

Charlie curls onto his side toward Dennis, whose face is creased with laughter and probably the biggest grin that could possibly fit on there. Dennis throws a fit if anyone so much as _mentions_ the word “wrinkle” around him. Seeing him like this, it’s hard to imagine why. After all, it’s impossible to laugh without wrinkles.

Dennis's laughter, somehow, is contagious. Despite the slight ache in his right elbow and hip, Charlie finds himself giggling again.  After a minute or two, neither of them knows what they’re laughing about. Still, they can’t seem to stop. It becomes a horrible feedback loop, where they’re laughing because they can’t stop laughing. This might be it, then. This might be how they die: rolling around on the floor, suffocating on their own laughter.

In the midst of their hysteria, the door opens with an ominous creak. Mac shuffles in with several overstuffed shopping bags in hand. One eyebrow is raised critically as he surveys the scene. For some insane reason, this sets them off again.

“Hey guys. ‘Sup?” Mac says, faux-casually. “Ran into Dee on the way back from the store. She says you’re being gross. And weird.”

“We’re dancing,” Dennis explains as he wipes tears away from his eyes.

“Dancing,” Mac repeats faintly.

Dennis coughs and chokes, and finally manages to suppress his laughter. “We were, anyway. Charlie broke me,” he sighs.

“His ass,” Charlie clarifies through the last of his snickering.

Mac shakes his head in disbelief. “Dude. I’m not even gonna ask.”

Dennis throws an arm over his forehead, like an old-timey maiden who’s fainted. He lets out a dramatic sigh. “You bring me my chips?”

Mac rolls his eyes and holds up a shopping bag, as if to demonstrate. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Sweet.”

After another moment of Mac standing awkwardly, surveying the scene, Dennis reaches up to wrap a hand around his wrist. “C’mon. Get down here. We’re doing a thing.”

Charlie follows Dennis's lead, tugging at Mac’s other hand. But Mac stands firm, resisting them both jerking at him, pulling him downward. “What _thing?_ Do you guys have any idea how nasty that floor is?” he whines.

Charlie doesn’t get a chance to defend his janitorial practices, because Dennis speaks up first: “Charlie ate all the cherries,” he states, apropos of nothing.

Mac’s eyes go wide and his jaw drops. “What the fuck, dude? I knew it was you!” With that, he throws the shopping bags to the floor and tackles Charlie.

After a brief scuffle, Mac manages to pin him to the floor, straddling his waist and pressing him down with both hands flat on his chest. If Charlie wanted to, he could push Mac off, but he chooses to show mercy. His new official Mac strategy involves letting Mac win the occasional fight or wrestling match. It sucks, but letting Mac believe he's strong may discourage him from going crazy about “cultivating mass” again.  Mac is already heavy as shit, anyway. He’s crushing all the air out of Charlie’s lungs, and is probably smashing Charlie’s ribcage into smithereens.

“Dude, get off of me,” Charlie wheezes, slapping and punching aimlessly at Mac’s shoulders. “You’re squashing all my inside organs and shit.”

_“Internal_ organs,” Mac corrects him, but he he rolls off Charlie and gets back to his feet.

Charlie takes in a harsh big breath. “Shit, dude,” he gasps and wheezes and coughs. “For real, man? I think you broke, like, my entire _everything_.”

“You’re fine. Don’t be such a baby about it,” Mac responds, with not an ounce of remorse. He dusts his hands off on his pants, which quite frankly, is rude as hell, given that Charlie just swept a week or two ago. Mac then offers a hand up, yanking Charlie to his feet using far more force than is necessary. It throws Charlie off balance and sends him stumbling into Mac’s chest. Mac is obviously trying to show off how strong he is.

No — how strong he _thinks_ he is. 

Fuck. 

With a scowl, Charlie pushes off of him. “Seriously, dude? _Seriously?_ How heavy do you think I am?”

Mac simply shrugs, pats him on the shoulder, and returns to fuss over Dennis.

It’s hot in the bar, Charlie realizes as he watches them together. He feels hot and restless and manic, like he could easily run a hundred miles if he wanted to. And he would, if he weren’t so bizarrely desperate to stay close to Mac and Dennis.

There’s something strange in the air, although Charlie doesn’t have a name for it. It’s like static electricity running through him. It’s probably time to take another look at the circuit breaker, or the wifi, or all the wires and cables he uses to siphon electricity from the neighboring businesses. He must be sensitive to that kind of thing. Maybe that’s what he’s feeling: the wifi run amok, fizzling through his veins like cell phone radiation. It’s hard to say; Charlie’s never understood how wifi works. Or cell phones, for that matter. Or radiation. But that's not important now.

Tomorrow. He’ll inspect all the electrical shit tomorrow. He pencils the task into his mental agenda, right after checking the rat hotels in the basement. Until then, there’s drinking. There’s always drinking.

(That’s the best thing about a drink: it’s always there. So reliable, so dependable.)

Charlie stumbles behind the bar and helps himself to a beer. The cold bottle feels nice against his hot, slightly sweaty face.

Back at the jukebox, Dennis flips through the music. He presses a shit ton of buttons, programing songs in, one after another. Afterward, he nods to Mac in invitation. Mac’s face and his puppy dog eyes scream that he can’t believe his luck, that he surely must be misreading the signal Dennis is sending him.

“C’mon. You broke Charlie. Let’s go,” orders Dennis, removing all doubt.

The lesbian breakup song comes back on again.

In the center of the impromptu dance floor, Mac wraps his arms around Dennis’s waist, casual and easy. Like it’s second-nature. Like he knows that his hands belong there, and there’s nowhere they’d rather be. Like every touch isn’t deliberate and calculated, one step at a time on unsteady footing across a frozen lake, and at any moment Charlie might step wrong and fall through the ice.

Ever so smoothly, Dennis’s arms wind around Mac’s neck and pull him closer. Dolly Parton sings slow and low, crooning out her heartbreak, and the two of them sway side to side.

As the second verse begins, it hits Charlie like a brick to the head — the mental image of Dennis spread out on his expensive dark sheets, all pale skin and soft curves. All the breath leaves his lungs. He imagines Dennis’s matching gasp for breath as Mac yanks his hair, just the way Dennis likes. He’d tug his head back to reveal the soft underside of Dennis’s neck, miles and miles of smooth, pale skin—

“Hey, you okay over there, buddy?” Dennis’s voice cuts through the fantasy, loud and teasing.

Charlie swallows past the dry cotton-wool feeling in his throat, and nods wordlessly. Jesus Christ, there must be something in the air tonight. Or the beer.

Or the feeling of Dennis, warm and solid in his arms before.

“You kinda had that thousand-yard stare goin’ on. Anything you wanna share with the class?” Dennis’s eyes are crinkled at the corners to match his bright grin. He must know. Mac is watching, too, with his head tilted to one side, like Poppins used to do.

Charlie shakes his head, and when he opens his mouth to speak, his voice comes out as an embarrassing, rasping stammer: “Nah. It’s good; I’m cool. Like, _so_ cool, y’know?”

With a mischievous grin stretched across his face, Dennis leans in even closer to whisper in Mac’s ear. Warm laughter is visible on Mac’s face as they continue to dance in slow circles around the bar. Dennis makes deliberate eye contact and winks at Charlie over Mac’s shoulder. It removes all doubt from Charlie’s mind: he _absolutely_ knows what he’s doing, the smug bastard. Not only that, but he’s doing it on purpose. Goddamn him.

Charlie could just murder him.

Instead, he continues to nurse his beer and watch the two of them dance. He tries not to make it obvious, but they don’t seem to mind, even when they catch him.  Frank and Dee aren’t in the bar, so maybe that’s why they don’t care. Maybe that’s why they’re being so bold, so much more obvious than they usually are about this thing between them.

When the song ends, Mac draws back a bit. He pauses for a moment, examining Dennis’s face closely, before placing a light kiss on his lips. Mac murmurs something that looks quiet and soft and sweet, inaudible from across the bar. It’s too intimate, too soft. Charlie feels like he should look away, but he can’t seem to make himself.

Dennis shakes his head, and pulls Mac back up against him. Another song follows on the jukebox. Dennis must have decided he’s done with the country music, because it’s an entirely different genre altogether: a song off one of David Bowie’s later albums. Of course — Dennis loves that shit. It’s dramatic and loud and more than a little gay.

He and Mac sway together in perfect rhythm, and Charlie just watches and takes slow sips of his beer.


	3. An Incorrect History of Dance

Before long, Charlie, Mac, and Dennis end up huddled in a booth together.  Over a suspiciously expensive-looking bottle of bourbon, they sit talking about nothing and everything.

It’s weird how, even after decades of friendship, they haven’t run out of things to say. They can spend countless hours jumping from one subject to another — laughing, arguing, and reminiscing. If asked about it afterward, Charlie would never be able to say what exactly they discussed. Still, he can’t get enough; he’s always left wanting more.

More _talking,_ that is. Not more of anything else in particular.

That would be weird. That wouldn’t be cool, especially now that Mac and Dennis are—

Well, now that they're Mac-and-Dennis. And they look like it, too — tonight more than ever.  Mac is leant up against the corner of the booth, with Dennis pressed against his side. He keeps an arm draped protectively, almost possessively, around Dennis. Every now and then, he presses his nose down into Dennis’s curls and closes his eyes. It’s almost as if he can’t believe Dennis is finally his. As if he can’t believe his luck.

It isn’t luck, though. Charlie knows that for certain, even if the two of them don’t. It was inevitable; the only thing Mac and Dennis needed to do was get out of their own way.  If anyone is lucky, it’s the rest of the Gang, who are lucky those two have finally sorted out their shit.

At least, it seems like they have. It wasn’t as if they came into the bar one day and announced it. In fact, no one has acknowledged it out loud yet. However, there’s been a noticeable shift in the dynamic between the Dynamic Duo. It wasn’t anything specific that Charlie could put his finger on — not for the first few months, anyway. There was no lightbulb moment where he suddenly realized it had finally happened. It was more of a growing awareness, like the gradual changing of seasons.

And then one afternoon, taking a break from the gang and hanging out in the air ducts, Charlie had stumbled upon the two of them making out in the back office.

It solidified a long-running theory in Charlie's mind: More people should spend time in air ducts. They provide a unique vantage point — not just literally, but metaphorically. Hang out in an air duct long enough, and a person starts to reevaluate all sorts of things. Charlie was pretty gay, as it turned out. At least, for Mac and Dennis. And maybe the Waitress a little bit, still. Face close to the opening of the vent, Charlie shoved a handful of cherries into his mouth just in time to muffle the _oh, shit_ he could feel trying to escape him.

But until tonight, they hadn’t been this obvious, this blatant about it. Not in public. Not in front of the others. A tiny, embarrassing part of Charlie’s mind whispers that it means he’s special. It means they trust him with this — with seeing them like this. They trust him with it in a way they don’t trust Dee and Frank. But maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. After all, hadn’t the three of them — Mac and Dennis and Charlie — decided all those years ago that they were best friends, together?

Even so, it's little bit inconvenient, isn't it — being attracted to his two best friends? His two best friends who happen to be in a relationship already. And w ith Mac and Dennis like this tonight, practically wrapped around each other, it makes that feeling all the more intense. Charlie feels slightly out of place. Is he allowed to look? He's not sure. They’ve given no indication they mind, and what else is he supposed to do — look in the opposite direction while he talks to them?

After about a glass of bourbon each, the conversation shifts to an argument over what music to add to the jukebox. Miraculously, it doesn’t devolve to yelling. What’s more, the personal insults that Mac and Dennis are exchanging seem more like teasing than genuine attacks, closer to flirting than to emotional battery. Finally, Charlie slowly relaxes enough to lean into the weirdness.

The three of them are debating adding more Dolly Parton to the jukebox when Dee stumbles back into the bar. There’s a faint lilac-colored lipstick mark smudged just north of her collar that she must not have noticed. The smell of cigarette smoke and weed fills Charlie’s nostrils as he gets up to let Dee slides into the booth next to him.  She helps herself a glass of bourbon, and slumps against the wall, picking aimlessly at a sticker plastered there.

Mac and Dennis must be as relaxed as Charlie is, given that they don’t chastise Dee for assuming she’s welcome or for stealing their booze.

Not long after that, Frank emerges from the back office. He's bleary-eyed and grumbling to himself, seemingly having awoken from a nap only moments prior. It wouldn't be surprising; late night naps are one of Frank's favorite kind of naps, along with post-breakfast naps and mid-afternoon siestas. Frank rolls the office chair over to the head of the table and throws himself down into it. From there, he grabs for the bourbon, forgoing a cup entirely, in favor of taking sloppy pulls straight from the bottle.

Dennis mumbles out an excuse, presumably for Dee and Frank’s benefit — _I’m so fucking tired —_ as he sighs and rests his head on Mac’s shoulder. It’s an obvious lie, but no one calls him on it. No one cares about Mac-and-Dennis as much as Mac and Dennis expect or want them to. Everyone saw this coming — not just from miles away, but from _decades_ away. So no one is surprised, but that doesn’t mean they want to explore their feelings about it.

Over the Rick Astley tracks playing in the background, Dee gripes and squawks about “having to” watch Charlie and Dennis dancing. It'll give her nightmares for months, she claims. _Bullshit._ Charlie tunes out Dee's squawking, and Dennis’s insults regarding Dee’s physique and lack of grace. As the twins squabble, Charlie takes in Dee's smeared lipgloss, and imagines what sort of person wears that shade of lip product smudged into her skin. He wonders what kind of woman Dee might be into, and what her coming out dance will look like. Perhaps instead of a dance, it’ll be a dramatic coming out monologue, like the one she was practicing at the bar earlier.

When Charlie listens in again, Frank seems to be giving a lecture on the history of dance. As with any of Frank's stories and lessons, it’s safe to assume that at least three-quarters of it is pure bullshit. Charlie zones out again, until raised voices grab his attention.

Mac and Dee seem to be chastising Frank for using offensive language.

Frank cuts them off with an impatient flap of one hand.  “Hush,” he snaps. “You steal my bourbon, you listen to me talk. None of that PC bullshit. I ain’t havin’ it.”

Dee mutters an insult beneath her breath, which Frank either doesn’t hear or chooses to ignore.

From his chair at the head of the table, Frank then demonstrates a disco move for the gang, as if he thinks they’ve never seen it before.  “You see? Just like that,” he states confidently. “It was a revolution in dance. The gays loved that shit. Black folks, too. That’s why it died, disco. The Powers That Be couldn’t stand that the Black people and the gay people were having a good time. That’s why the CIA invented crack cocaine. And AIDS. And that was the end of disco.”

Charlie looks around the table. Sometimes, checking his friends’ reactions is the best way to determine whether Frank is fucking with him.

Dennis’s eyes are shut tight in a way that looks like he’s either in pain or wants to scream. Mac has a hand clamped down over his mouth, his eyes wide with incredulity. Dee has her head thrown back against the back of the booth, staring up at the ceiling. Some sort of inhuman noise is struggling to make its way out the back of her throat, although she’s doing an impressive job of suppressing it.

Frank, however, is entirely oblivious to their reactions. He tends to get like that when he's excited. He talks with no awareness of whether anyone is even listening, much less offended by his words. Charlie’s heard that getting old makes a person bigoted and out-of-touch — racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and all that shit. It seems true with Frank, but Mac seems an exception to that rule. He did it backwards, growing less homophobic with age. Kind of like the gay version of Benjamin Button Syndrome; maybe that’s why Dennis calls him baby boy.

“Now, the jitterbug—” Frank continues, belching and wiping his mouth off on the back of his hand “—that was another big one.”

Charlie doesn’t need a lecture on _that;_ he remembers the jitterbugs. There was a bad outbreak in their building recently. It was itchy as hell, and Hwang took _months_ to bring out an exterminator.

“Just like anything worthwhile, we stole it from Black folks,” Frank concludes.  He takes a generous sip of bourbon out of the bottle. “‘Course, if we’re talking about the hand jive…”

The subject change from dancing to bug infestations, then back to dancing is confusing and weird; but then again, so is Frank. Charlie mostly tunes out after that, focusing on the sound of Frank's voice more so than the actual words. For reasons Charlie couldn’t explain — not even to himself — listening to Frank ramble is oddly comforting, even when it’s mostly nonsense and offensive bullshit.

As he melts further into his seat, Charlie searches for empty space on the opposite bench to rest his feet. He finds it between Mac and Dennis’s thighs.

Between the familiar sound of Frank’s voice, the bourbon, and several rounds of dancing, Charlie feels relaxed and comfortable and warm.  It’s the same feeling he got the first time Mac and Dennis came to hang out in his efficiency apartment all those years ago. After spending ages on the Section 8 waiting list, Charlie finally had his own place. His own home. His brain felt pleasantly fuzzy from the celebratory mixture of weed and glue. As he sat sprawled out on the floor, gazing up at Mac and Dennis sitting side by side on his sofa, it felt as if things were finally falling into place. Like:  _ This is what it’s supposed to feel like. _

_What_ what’s _supposed to feel like?_ he’d asked himself then. High as he was, young and inexperienced as he was, he had been unable to answer.

Decades later, he thinks he knows.  _Friendship, and home, and happiness,_ Charlie decides. _This is how it’s supposed to feel._

There’s a hand at his ankle, rubbing just under the hem of his jeans, above his sock. The quirk of Dennis’s eyebrows says it's him. His sly smile says he knows exactly what he’s doing, and he isn’t sorry. Charlie, on the other hand, feels a twinge of guilt as he looks at Mac. As he takes in Mac’s arm, still wrapped around Dennis’s shoulder, his thumb brushing at Dennis’s upper arm.

Mac catches Charlie’s eye across the table, smiling warmly and half-nodding in acknowledgement.

Dennis doesn’t stop, but it feels nice. Almost _too_ nice. Guilt, however, has never been a welcome emotion in Charlie’s mind. What’s the use in it? Feeling guilty never changed anything. Besides, he tells himself, he’s probably misinterpreting Dennis’s intentions. He must be. What other explanation could there be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank thank thank to the folks who commented + left kudos. I ended up realizing I hated chapter three, so kinda spent ages agonizing over it. debated cutting it entirely, but here we are. better half-assed (or not-fully-assed, anyway) than never posted at all, I suppose.


	4. Muscle Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can just ask, you know,” Dennis says on an exhale.
> 
> “Ask what?” There are so many questions Charlie might ask, but Dennis must have a plan. There’s something specific Charlie is supposed to ask, another sequence to the dance he has yet to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .  
> .  
> TW for several references to past trauma / sexual assault / CSA (i.e., Dee, and the Nightman / Uncle Jack)  
> .  
> .

Dee quickly grows irritated with Frank's seemingly endless lecture. He is, as ever, undeterred by any and all attempts to cut him off or change the subject. Given that they've drained the bottle of bourbon, Dee seems to find no reason to stay. She stumbles out the door, muttering under her breath. It sounds like insults, but no one pays her any attention. Certainly not Frank.

Shorty thereafter, a dramatic entrance by Artemis finally puts an end to Frank’s monologue. Artemis announces loudly and exuberantly what she plans to do with Frank tonight. There’s something in there about an oyster-and-clam role play, but Charlie refuses to consider what that might mean.  Thankfully, Frank drags her out the door before Charlie is forced to hear too many graphic details.

After that, it's just him and Mac and Dennis again. It's strangely silent.

Mac and Dennis exchange a significant glance across the booth. Charlie can't decode what it might mean.

"Well," Mac starts, then meanders through a boring, overly-detailed story about his drive back to the bar. He claims to have parked the Range Rover somewhere weird after the grocery store excursion. There was a tow truck out front, he explains, and you know what those assholes with the Philadelphia Parking Authority are like. The excuse sounds suspect — and weirdly specific — but Charlie doesn’t care enough to question it.

Mac wanders out into the dark, then, to retrieve the car. 

So it’s just him and Dennis again. Quiet, still. Weirdly quiet. They hang around the back alley, waiting for Mac to pull around. It feels like something out of a dream. Charlie doesn’t know why, but his gut tells him to stick around for a while. Maybe he needs to make sure Dennis gets home safely? No, probably not. It’s never been an issue before, except for a few times when Mac and Dennis were far drunker than this.

Something weird is definitely happening tonight, though — with the Range Rover, with Mac, with Dennis, with Mac-and-Dennis, with whatever was going on earlier with Charlie-and-Dennis, with whatever was in the drinks tonight, with the warm night air and gentle breeze, and the nearly-full moon in the sky.

Why are they standing around in the alley, anyway?

Dennis takes a sharp breath in. Charlie startles at the sound.

“You can just ask, you know,” Dennis says on an exhale.

“Ask what?” There are so many questions Charlie might ask, but Dennis must have a plan. There’s something specific Charlie is supposed to ask, another sequence to the dance he has yet to learn.

Dennis ignores the question. “You dropped me on purpose,” he answers instead. “But we both know that’s not what you really wanted to do.”

“Oh, yeah? What’d I really want, then? If you’re so smart,” Charlie challenges him. _Tell me, because I don’t know,_ he wishes he had the guts to say.

“Me,” Dennis answers simply.

Charlie blinks, and takes a big step back. “What?” His hands fumble in the dark for something solid to hold onto. Maybe he drank more than he realized. He shouldn’t feel this unsteady, this out of control of his own... _everything._ It shouldn’t feel like this. Or should it?

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“That’s—No, that’s stupid. C’mon.” The way his voice wavers makes Charlie want to curl up in a ball and hide. The knowledge that his feelings earlier were so completely fucking transparent makes him want to curl up in a ball and _die._

“Hmmm,” Dennis hums thoughtfully. “Maybe. Maybe I’m wrong. First time for everything, I suppose. Anyway—” Dennis turns around and starts to stalk out the alley “—I’ll see you around, Charlie. Thanks for the dance.”

Reaching out, a hand on his shoulder, Charlie pulls him back. “Wait.”

Dennis pauses in his tracks.

“Mac would kill me,” Charlie whispers.

Dennis laughs, quiet and breathy. When at last he faces Charlie again and makes eye contact, there’s warmth in his eyes, not cold, calculating cruelty. Openness, not deceit. It doesn’t feel like the D.E.N.N.I.S. System. Not even remotely. Charlie doesn’t know _what_ it is.

“No, he won’t,” Dennis murmurs.

It’s been so long. Charlie really shouldn’t. But it’s been _so long._

“He won’t, I swear,” repeats Dennis breathily. “It’s okay.”

It doesn’t sound like a lie, and it doesn’t _look_ like a lie. It _should,_ but it doesn’t.

Besides, Charlie has done far worse things. He’s done far crazier things, too — many of them with Dennis. Even so, he wishes Dennis would make the first move. It would give Charlie plausible deniability.

But Dennis doesn’t move at all; he just watches and waits in silence.

“What do I—How…” Charlie stammers, and shifts from one foot to the other. His hands twitch by his sides, uncertain where to land. It’s not like he’s never kissed anyone before. It’s not like he’s never kissed _Dennis_ before. He knows how to do this, but _does_ he? What if he gets this all wrong? If he’s going to ruin everything with a kiss, he should at least get the kiss right.

“You know,” Dennis answers simply. “You’ve done it before. Not like anything’s changed.”

Charlie frowns. “S’not true. Everything has.”

“Not this.”

Somehow, that’s the most reassuring thing Charlie has heard all night. So maybe the last of his restraint vanishes into the ether, but it’s understandable. It’s not as if he ever had a lot of self-restraint or impulse control, anyway.

And Dennis was right: In the end, it’s like muscle memory. Their lips fit together just so, the same as they always did. His fingers weave through Dennis’ hair, ruining his delicately styled curls. Dennis pulls him close, holding on tight, just like he learned to do all those years ago — too light and Charlie’s skin crawls, and Dennis must remember. His lips taste like bourbon, a waxy hint of lipstick, and the faintest taste of Maraschino cherries under it all. The goddamn bastard — he must’ve finished the jar when Charlie wasn’t looking.

With his arms still wrapped tight around Charlie, Dennis takes a few steps backward. It takes a moment, half-frenzied and hazy-brained, for Charlie to break away and decode his intentions. Dennis is leading them gently toward the wall of the alley, like _here — right here._ So Charlie guides him the rest of the way back and presses him into the worn bricks there. Dennis makes the most gorgeous sound into his mouth then. It’s even better than Charlie remembered.

This, too, he couldn’t ever get enough of. Dennis wanted more than this, in the end; Charlie never did. It always seemed so terrifying, back then. But every now and then, in the intervening years, he's imagined that might not be such a bad thing, doing more than just kissing. It might even be nice. Better than nice, even.

With that in mind, he slides his fingers up just so, letting them find the slightest bit of soft skin under the hem of Dennis’s button-down Oxford. Dennis lets out the tiniest little whimper, and Charlie thinks he might die, right here in this alley.

Except then, another quiet sound — like dried leaves or plastic garbage crunching underfoot — alerts him to another presence nearby. Charlie’s heart leaps and skips wildly, like it’s trying to crawl up his throat and run away from the intruder. He jumps back and scrambles away from Dennis.

Of course, luck being what it is, it’s Mac. He’s standing quietly nearby, just watching, thumbs tucked into his pockets. He’s breathing heavily; Charlie is almost certain he’s about to get his ass kicked.

He throws out the first excuse that comes to mind: “Dennis and I are smoking!” His voice is far too loud, far too defensive. It echoes off the old brick walls and lands back on him, sounding desperate and deceitful even to his own ears.

“Smoking,” Mac repeats, low and incredulous.

The look on Dennis’s face is not that of someone willing to go along with the lie. No, the look on his face is familiar, and says clearly: _Charlie, you’re insane._ Dennis may have a point, though, because there’s not a single cigarette in sight; Charlie realizes this now. But he can fix it.

“We lost the cigarette," he blurts out. “Dennis did. He swallowed it. I was looking for it.”

“With your _tongue.”_ Mac’s tone of voice is half-question, half-statement, and all disbelief.

Dennis buries his face in his hands for a moment. “Jesus Christ, are fucking kidding me?”

“Yeah, man,” Charlie says, and reels Dennis in again with a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon, open up. I’ll stick my hand in, and—”

When Dennis looks up again, the expression on his face is pure ice and fire. Charlie drops his hand immediately. “Absolutely goddamn not,” Dennis snaps. “You are not putting your hand anywhere near my mouth. Are you out of your mind? I didn’t _swallow_ a _cigarette_ , Charlie. What the hell do you think you’re gonna accomplish in there?”

Charlie shrugs, suitably abashed. “Check your teeth. I dunno. Cavities,” he mumbles vaguely.

_“No.”_

“Charlie, I’m not fucking stupid,” Mac insists. _Yeah, you are,_ is about to escape Charlie's mouth, but then Mac continues talking, and Charlie nearly swallows his own tongue in shock. “You’ve been undressing Dennis with your eyes all damn night.”

“That’s stupid. You can’t undress people with your eyeballs; you have to use your hands,” Charlie argues half-heartedly, even though he knows exactly what Mac means — just not that Mac caught him doing it.

“Is that right?” Mac tries to make it sound subtly suggestive, but in his entire life, Mac has never once been able to pull off subtle. “Well, your eyeballs were thinking about undressing him with your hands.”

It isn’t entirely inaccurate. There’s no way to respond to that, except with a lie. Charlie can’t think of a good one, though. Not after the cigarette thing fell so flat.

It’s funny, but looking around the alley now, there’s an unbelievable amount of trash scattered along the ground. Even worse, the dumpster looks about four inches too close to the back door. He should straighten things up, in case another surprise health inspection is heading their way. These things don’t take care of themselves. And certainly none of his friends are going to take care of it, either.

“I know you want to,” Mac purrs.

Charlie startles. “Are you serious?” He looks back and forth between Mac and Dennis, waiting for any of this to make sense. “Dude. You can’t be serious right now.”

Mac shrugs. Dennis does, too.

“Mac won’t—You said Mac wouldn’t mind,” Charlie stammers.

“What’d I tell you? I’m never wrong,” Dennis boasts. The smug bastard.

“You set this up, didn’t you? Both of you. That’s why you’re not—Are you _serious?_ You—You get off on this, don’t you?”

“I mean…” Mac shrugs again, and suddenly can’t make eye contact.

“Oh, that’s _sick,_ dude.”

“Is it?” Dennis asks lightly. “You watched my tapes, too, Charlie. I know you liked it — watching me with other people. You got off on that shit. Both of you. How’s this any different?”

“It’s completely different! This is—It’s _me,”_ he chokes out.

“Well, _yeah,”_ Mac agrees, with a bashful shrug. “That’s kinda the point, dude.”

_Mac liked the tapes because it was the closest he could get to the real thing,_ Charlie wants to say. Everyone knows it; they've always known it. But for some reason, it feels like speaking it aloud would be crossing a line.

“No. ‘Cause you—You finally—” Charlie stammers, gesturing frantically back and forth between the two of them. He has no idea how to word it. He hasn’t forgotten the time Dee infamously triggered the world’s most obnoxious break-up ever with merely a few snide comments about Mac and Dennis's relationship. Charlie refuses to be responsible for anything of the sort.

“The two of you…” He gestures between them again. “And now you’re gonna…” Charlie doesn’t even know what his hand gestures are attempting to convey at this point, but hopefully Mac and Dennis will understand. “Jesus. With _me?_ What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Dennis stalks closer, calling to mind the memory of an alleycat Charlie saw hunting a rather scruffy mouse in this very alley a few days previously. His teeth glint in the low glow of the nearby streetlights. “Mac was telling me a little more about the, uh, _fun_ you all had at my expense. While I was gone, you know? Seems you rather enjoyed yourselves.”

“Fun?” Charlie echoes.

“Sex doll orgy,” Mac supplies. Hearing it aloud, stated so bluntly, it’s possibly the worst combination of words in the English language.

Dennis scowls just briefly, before he manages to wipe the expression clean off his face. Charlie can imagine the words fighting to escape his mouth: _A little finesse, Mac._ However, Dennis somehow resists the urge to snap. It really is impressive. He diverts his attention to Charlie instead. After watching so many of Dennis's tapes, the expression on his face is intimately familiar. It's etched into Charlie’s memory, replayed over and over in his mind like a well-loved cassette tape.

“I thought it was only fair that you invite me along this time,” Dennis explains.

Charlie winces, because, _oh, shit._ Whatever happened to the creepy life-size silicone Dennis look-alike? Did it run away, to return home to the Uncanny Valley?

Somewhere between the strip club and the orgy, Dee lectured everyone about a place called the Uncanny Valley. The memory of her words is shrouded by the haze of tequila, and a general sense of irritation at the sound of Dee’s voice. Charlie remember the essentials, though: Uncanny Valley is the place where everyone and everything creepy comes from — specifically, people and things that look almost entirely like real humans, but not quite. There’s something slightly _off_ about them, something you can’t quite put your finger on. Like CGI humans in movies. Or the Nightman, when he visits Charlie in nightmares. Or that godawful Dennis sex doll.

If Dee explained why everyone from the Uncanny Valley looks so creepy, Charlie can't recall. Maybe there’s a radiation leak there. After all, radiation causes genetic mutations, and not just the cool ones that superheroes get in comic books. Really gnarly ones, too. Maybe that's how Uncanny Valley Dennis was born.

Hopefully he's is doing well back in his hometown, and not becoming any more mutated with further exposure to the Uncanney Valley radiation. The real Dennis would be pissed if a thing that’s supposed to be a literal representation of him grew a third arm or a second head. It was already creepy enough as it was, with the usual number of limbs and heads and fingers and toes and dicks.

“Charlie?” Dennis prompts him cautiously.

Charlie looks to Mac nervously, and draws in a deep breath. “Do you have Uncanny Valley Dennis, or am I supposed to?”

“There’s no—” Dennis grits his teeth, and takes a deep breath. “No sex doll, okay? None of that shit.” He pauses, and his voice comes out more even, level, and slow. Hypnotic, almost. “Just you, and me, and Mac.”

The words land heavy in between them.

“Oh.” Charlie says. It feels like the air has been sucked out of his lungs, and possibly the entire alleyway. _“Oh.”_

“Yeah. _Oh,”_ Dennis says. He takes another step closer. Right back in Charlie’s face again, but somehow, it’s okay.

“Come home with us?” Dennis’s voice low and smooth and oh-so-tempting in his ear. It sounds simultaneously amazing and terrifying. But above all, it sounds absolutely fucking _insane._ Charlie isn’t nearly drunk enough for this.

A big part of him wants nothing more than what Dennis is offering, but a not-insignificant part of him is scared shitless. That part wants to go home, back to _his own home —_ his efficiency apartment in Section 8 housing with Frank, where everything is safe and predictable. Maybe when Frank comes home from his date, the two of them can play a quick round of Nightcrawlers before bed. Or maybe Charlie will just crawl onto the futon next to Frank and drift off to sleep. If he’s lucky, warm memories of tonight will keep him company and fill his dreams, until there’s no room left in his skull for nightmares.

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Mac offers.

“Right,” Charlie answers faintly.

One of Dennis’s hands, oddly cool to the touch, reaches for Charlie’s. He threads their fingers together, brushes a thumb lightly over Charlie’s skin. It’s not a lot, but it really is. Especially with the way Dennis is looking deep into his eyes, as if the answer might lie therein. Charlie remembers once more why he doesn’t like eye contact: it’s too intense, too personal. It hurts, sometimes.

“You don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to. Or like, y’know, maybe it could happen another time,” Mac says quietly, and shrugs. “Or not at all. It’s up to you, man.”

Mac isn’t at all mad. Just quiet and calm, honest and encouraging, in his own awkward and inarticulate way. There’s no pressure to give in, no hands holding Charlie down or covering his mouth. Just Mac, warm and relaxed and close.

And, _god,_ Mac gets a bad rap sometimes — rightfully so.  He's annoying and emotional and needy. He's clingy. He's—

He's clingy, but he's always there. He's reliable. Safe. He knows Charlie better than anyone. If anyone were to make this okay—

Mac would be careful. Mac wouldn't let anything bad happen. Mac _knows._

“Alright?” Mac says gently, and it’s not until then that Charlie realizes he still hasn’t said a single word in response.

“Another time,” Charlie repeats faintly. “Yeah. Yeah, maybe.”

It’s nice, isn’t it? That they’re not limiting his options to “yes, and right now” or “no, never.” _Maybe later_ , Charlie thinks. “Maybe later” is a nice option to have. It’s promising, but not threatening — the possibility, with neither the demand nor the expectation.

Mac smiles warily. “You gonna be alright getting home?”

“I always am.”

Then there’s a warm hand on his cheek, and Dennis’ thumb brushing along his cheekbone. His blue eyes, deep dark blue like the depths of the night sky above, looking deep into Charlie’s. “Goodnight, Charlie.” And his voice is uncharacteristically soft and low and sweet, just like it is when he places one last kiss on Charlie’s lips.

As if by instinct or reflex, Charlie’s eyes flutter closed for a moment.

“See ya, buddy,” Mac says from somewhere nearby.

Unsure whether he can trust his mouth to say the right words — or to speak at all — he nods back wordlessly.

As if by unspoken agreement, Mac and Dennis make their way out of the alley. “Joined at the hip,” his mom always used to say about him and Mac when they were kids. It never made sense until tonight, seeing Mac and Dennis standing so close, touching so effortlessly, and moving together as one.

They turn the corner and walk off into the night. From the street out front, the Range Rover doors open and close, the engine turns on, and the opening chords of “The Boys are Back in Town” float out into the night air.

The car drives off into the distance.

Somehow, Charlie doesn’t feel alone, or sad, or sorry for himself like he thinks he should.

Maybe tonight was enough.

And maybe another night, more won’t be too much.

In the meantime, there’s the walk home: darkened streets full of uncollected garbage to explore, and countless wonders to discover. There’s a game of Nightcrawlers yet to be played, and a set of comfortable pajamas awaiting him on his cozy futon. The predictable rhythm of Frank’s snoring, and eighty alley cats howling outside their window as countless rats scurry through their walls.

A good night, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t believe I actually posted every chapter of a multi-chapter fic. I hope, if nothing else, this inspires folks to write more charmacden fic. Write the charmacden content you wish to see in the world.
> 
> Pls feel free to scream at me on tumblr @chrundletheokay, and/or reassure me that I'm not Charlie-Kelly-levels of illiterate.
> 
> Ok, goodnight, and thanks for reading! xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> I swear, I wrote the cherry stuff before “The Janitor Always Mops Twice” aired. In fact, I wrote this entire thing before s14 started. (May 2019, according to my computer.) I abandoned it for ages, because the editing process is truly agonizing. It still could use additional editing, so this may be a lil rough around the edges. But hey, life is short. Maybe it's better to post imperfect fics than none at all.
> 
> (PS: I love that I don’t understand how plot works, so I’m like, “Oh, cherries went missing? Yes! That’s a plot! Let’s take that and run with it.” However, I like to think an actual plot developed along the way, in spite of the cherries’ constant — and possibly annoying — presence.)
> 
> PPS: This is fully written! The last two (out of four) chapters still need a final edit. Health permitting, I hope to get to it soon. In the meantime, I'd seriously love and appreciate reassurance that this isn't horribly written/edited.


End file.
